Never Let You Down: The Connaghers, Book 4 by Joely Sue Burkhart Page B

Dark things. Hard things. I’m not a soft and easy woman to know, even in bed. Especially in bed.”
    “Good.” His voice deepened. He let go of the steering wheel and gripped his thighs, as though he was fighting to keep his hands from reaching toward her. “There are things you don’t know about me too, Ginny. Dark things. Hard things. Not even Sharon knew, not until the end.”
    “Is that why you’re divorced?”
    “Partly. But mostly because I finally decided I had to start living. Really living. And that meant I had to find a way back to you.”
    Regret swelled in her chest, strangling her. All those years, those wasted, lonely years. It broke her heart all over again. She’d been so alone since Ty’s death. Jeb hadn’t been alone, but he’d been unhappy. All because of a silly, too-proud girl who’d been too afraid to admit to her fiancé that she also had feelings for her best friend.
    Feelings. That was the understatement of the century. Because staring at the chiseled lines of his face, his broad shoulders straining at the exquisitely cut suit coat, his hands, so determinedly held in place by will alone…
    “What?” Jeb turned his head toward her, but kept his body determinedly frozen in place. His shoulders were tense, his jaw firm, his fingers still locked to hold himself back. “What are you thinking?”
    She kept her voice light. “I’m wishing I didn’t have this busted arm, and that we were twenty years younger, and then I’d be half climbing over the console to see for myself.”
    “See what?” He took the implied invitation, though, turning toward her and moving closer to make it easy for her to reach him. Jeb would always make it easy for her. Even if that made it hell for him all these years.
    Gently, she reached up and combed her fingers through his hair at his crown, dragging and twisting her fingers into the fullness and completely messing up the hair he’d carefully smoothed back. “If this hair is still yours. Still real. I hardly recognized you without the hair tumbling down across your forehead.”
    “It’s mine, just a little thinner I guess.”
    “Still as wavy and thick as I remembered. Grayer, but then mine is too.” She watched him, the way his eyes never left hers. He didn’t push to take any advantage, even after her admission that she’d lied all those years ago. He didn’t even try to lean in and get a kiss. “I always thought you were too damned polite, but that wasn’t it at all. Before Ty showed up, I kept daydreaming about how you might kiss me. One day, you’d just lean into me and catch me by surprise. I kept waiting, like it was a game, and then I got pissed that you wouldn’t do it. I thought it was our upbringing, the years our families had been friends. But that wasn’t it at all. You’re not just polite. You’re submissive.”
    The tension straining across his shoulders bled away. “It went against every bone in my body to start that kiss. I felt like I was forcing myself on you, but I had to try. I had to make sure you knew how I felt. I didn’t know what I was, not then. Not for years.”
    “Ty was into pain. What are you into?”
    Jeb’s eyes were larger, dark and shining, reflecting the moonlight like deep, secret wells. “Anything. Everything. You.”
    “I’m serious.”
    “So am I. You tell me to do something, and I’ll do it, no questions asked. No hesitation. No doubt. If you need something, I’ll give it. Gladly.”
    Once, Ty had said something like that. Hoarsely, she repeated what her husband had said the first time they’d kissed. “You’ll never let me down.”
    “Exactly.”
    She had to look away a moment, fighting down the tumultuous emotions whirling through her. Grief, loss, relief, joy, regret, hope…and yes, love. Gratitude that despite how she’d hurt him nearly forty years ago, he was still willing to give everything he had just to love her the way he’d always wanted. “How can you forgive me after what